Earth (G) **½

By gcardenas

Created 04/22/2009 - 07:21

'Earth' is a grab bag of beautiful nature footage.

Roger Moore, The Orlando Sentinel
Earth, the first film from Disney's new documentary unit, Disneynature, covers every corner of the natural world. It's a grab bag of beautiful nature footage, narrated by James Earl Jones and compiled from the BBC's Planet Earth series. We meet funny birds of paradise and cuddly penguins, but also a doomed polar bear and a shark dining on seals. Wolves chase caribou and a cheetah runs down a gazelle. Nothing too graphic, but it creates drama.

There is a message to this film about a fragile ''changing planet'' -- the planet is getting warmer. That's why polar bears are drowning or starving, why deserts are expanding and elephants are dying of thirst.